I want to encourage you to consider participating in a discussion group, accessible through Facebook - the Pontifex Forum - that was started earlier in the year. It is a private group open to Pontifex University students and subscribers to this blog. It has a small but active membership at the moment and is proving to be highly enjoyable and stimulating for those involved. Already it is stimulating creativity that is generating commissions. We encourage you to join. You can access it here. Tell them you are a subscriber to this blog and you will be admitted.

There have already been successes. Two members of the Forum (who are both Pontifex University students on the Master of Sacred Arts program, Kathryn Laffrey, and Alix Murray who live in Michigan and the UK respectively decided to create embroidered images of Christ. I blogged about their work, here: Embroidered Chalice Pall in the Style of St Albans Psalter and here: The Divine is in the Detail. As a result of this, the work of both attracted attention. One received a commission from the Rector of a Catholic Cathedral in Kansas, and another had her work placed in Shrewsbury Cathedral.

In case you are wondering, I have deliberately not participated actively in this group. The idea is to create a place where the discussion of ideas can stimulate creativity without the teacher breathing down their neck! Those of you who have read my book, The Way of Beauty will remember that I proposed that a vital element of education is that which is done by the student community in the absence of the teachers. This is the point that John Henry Newman made in his Idea of the University, and it is consistent with my own experiences at St Edmund Hall, Oxford (which again I describe in my book). The Pontifex Forum is a way of encouraging this community interaction at an online university.